Nerdy Science Blog

Lone Grey wrote an article which I would like to share it.

I seem to recall, at least in Malaysia, the choice was fairly straightforward. There were only a few career paths that our parents had tried to indoctrinate us towards since an early age. The number one most popular choice of parents was for their children to be a doctor. Being an engineer was a close second, with lawyer third and so forth. Children being children, we had our own set of priorities. Movie Star was our number one choice.

As we grow up, it is said that our priorities change as our world view changes. I seem to recall that my very first venture into the realm of “what I want to be when I grew up” was quite simply to be rich! I wanted to be a millionaire. It did not matter how. The details were not important as long as I was filthy rich.

I never want to be a doctor (but my parents and grandparents do, and I let them down by choosing doing science). What I wanted to be was a filthy rich scientists (I watched too much cartoons and thought that scientists are rich and smart dudes).

Reality intervened and I realised that back home in Malaysia, there was zero research in the field of neurobiology or neurochemistry. It was more practical for me to study oleochemistry due to Malaysia’s love affair with oil palm, our golden crop. In the end, I settled on Microbiology as there was still a lot of diseases ravaging the country. By now, I had given up on the idea of being rich. Being famous in microbiology is also not all that great cause about the only way you become famous is to discover a new disease and have it named after you. From then on all who suffer the disease and the medical students who have to study the disease for their exams will curse your name as in “The doctor told me that I have that @#*%#@! disease.”

Immunologist is not needed back in the country as well.

I just had my molecular microbiology exam today. The mcq part was easy. However I guess I screwed up the short answers one as I’m not interested at the questions they asked.  Tomorrow is the “advanced molecular biology” exam.  Arghh!  I got to switch my prokaryotic molecular brain database to eukaryotic one in just one night.

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Years ago;

“I wanna be a virologist, combating deadly viruses at the frontline, save life, save the world!”

Later;

“I wanna win a Nobel Prize, I wanna my family, my friends, even the country proud of me!”

“I wanna publish papers in famous journals, in Nature, in Science… etc, I wanna make great research discoveries and breakthroughs!”

and then…

“arghhh… I just wish I could get my bench work done, and figure out why my plasmid gone!”

“Abstracts, papers, conferences… nagging, dragging, dying…”

“Wish I could finish my MSc / PhD thesis… God, give me strength~~~”

Now;

“I want money, I want happiness, I want my life back!”

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No, it isn’t me, it’s just a thought since the word “evolution” has become top-five-tag in Nerdy Science.

Happy research!